Labour Resources in Peasant Farms on Polish Territories Annexed by Prussia after the Partition of Poland, 1810-1910

Abstract

This article analyses labour resources in peasant farms on Polish territories annexed by Prussia between 1810 and 1910, examining the demographic and socio-economic transformations generated by peasant emancipation, industrialization, and the demographic revolution. The aim is to measure and explain the evolution of the agricultural labour force according to four principal factors: economic, feudal, demographic, and spatial.
The sources include the censuses of the Duchy of Warsaw, documents relating to peasant emancipation, socio-occupational censuses of the agricultural population, and the agricultural censuses of 1882, 1895, and 1907, drawn from Prussian and German imperial statistics. The analysis distinguishes five categories of farm by size - from the minuscule holding to the manor estate - and covers the regions of Silesia, Greater Poland, Pomerania, and Warmia-Masuria.
The results show that until the 1870s the agricultural population grew faster than the general population, with a particularly sharp increase in the partially employed landless population. From the 1870s, the demographic revolution and rapid industrialization reversed this trend: the agricultural labour force showed below-average growth, and internal and external emigration caused stagnation or numerical decline. The feudal factor, initially expressed in corvée obligations and subsequently in other forms of labour tribute under Prussian agrarian reform, varied in intensity by farm size and type of ownership.
The demographic revolution led to the emergence of the modern peasant family or peasant-worker family, whose surplus labour supply fed the manor estates, local industry, and migratory flows to Western Europe and overseas, while simultaneously constituting an element of social equilibrium that moderated social unrest during the period of industrialization.